Holidays provide such great craft fodder. It was entirely Calvin's idea to make a shamrock craft for this week's holiday. Again, I think he just likes to use the Cricut, and maybe the glue stick. Actually, come to think of it, he's pretty keen on painting as well. In any case, here we are, getting ready for the greenest of holidays.

St. Patrick's Day art

Four hearts and a lower case "t" cut on the Cricut. Calvin removed the cross on the "t" with his little scissors and glued all the pieces together. It was boring by iteslf, so he decided to raid my button collection (which is, thankfully, rather extensive), and we used Glue Dots to adhere them to the shamrock. He wrote "Lucky" just for a final touch, and when we couldn't find a frame in the right color? He painted one.

St. Patrick's Day door wreath

I was never a wreath person before, but I've since changed my mind—I really like having something cheerful and welcoming on the door. When the Valentine's wreath came down, a week or so later than proper, of course, Calvin and I went in search of a replacement. A pre-made spring wreath runs upwards of $30 at the craft stores, and the wreath forms themselves are upwards of $10, not to mention the cost of additional materials, so instead we visited our PTO Thrift shop, which is quickly becoming one of our favorite shopping stops.

At the trhift shop we found a very country (not our style) door wreath for $2, relatively boring fake flowers in a happy yellow color for $1, and two rolls of green and shamrock ribbon for $1. A few quick snips freed the wreath base, and about three minutes later we had a spring worthy front door wreath for all of $5.

Here is another one of the homemade gifts we gave at Christmas—hand painted canvas book bags. A little clichéd, I know, but when I saw the bags on sale at Joann's I couldn't pass it up.

Supplies: Canvas bag (or apron, etc.), fabric paints, pipe cleaners, sponge shapes, brushes, and fabric pens/markers.

1. First we made our stamps. Depending on who is doing this craft you could simply paint right on the bags, but with my three year old helper I decided that shape stamping would work better and we made the necessary shapes out of pipe cleaners and sponges. For flower stems I twisted one pipe cleaner into the shape of two leaves, then wrapped them around another straight pipe cleaner. For the grass I cut a pipe cleaner down a bit, then folded it in half to make two short blades of grass. With both of the stem and the grass I folded up one tip to use as a handle. For the flower heads we used a heart shaped sponge, and for the center just a dab with a paint brush.

2. Once we'd made our shapes I poured the paints onto small dessert plates, one color to a plate, and we dabbed our shapes into the paint, using a brush to make sure they were well coated before applying them to the canvas. We ended up with quite a bit of color mixing, of course. I allowed the bags to dry overnight before painting the second side, which I decided should have Calvin's adorable little hand prints, and he decided should have a few more shapes as well.

3. I finished this craft by writing on the bags with fabric markers (after they'd dried over night again). Done.

We've been busy with our paints, stamps, papers and glue gun this week. Crafts, like baking, are a favorite part of the holidays for me, and now that Calvin is old enough to really take part it's kind of like a license to go crazy. I think the handprint turkey is my favorite. I've been wanting to do that one since the kid was born.

I'm not the greatest artist myself, but a quick Google image search for Thanksgiving coloring pages produced a number of iconographic salutes to run off for more Crayola usage. We colored these, then I used two of them as starting points to make larger outline drawings of a turkey and a cornucopia on newsprint, which we promptly painted over, some of us more thickly than others. I love the smell of art room paint almost as much as that of paste, and it's a good thing, too.

Our felt counting turkey, complete with song (think something like Five Little Speckled Frogs, only with turkey feathers and, oh nevermind).

And the Thanksgiving icons we made to go with Calvin's Thanksgiving book (the one I reviewed a bit here). I did most of the cutting on these guys, and all of the glue gun handling, but Calvin helped stick some of the pieces together. (In case you're wondering, that's a harvest moon...)